Postscript : The Peace Corps at 30: Still Under Fire : Veterans say the new director is trying to link the agency to U.S. foreign policy and further his own political career.

Late in his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy climbed the steps of the University of Michigan’s student union, and, in a 2 a.m. address to 10,000 students, raised his voice with a historic challenge to the nation’s youth:

“How many of you are willing to spend 10 years in Africa or Latin America or Asia working for the U.S. and working for freedom?” he asked.

The response was overwhelming, not only from Michigan, but from idealistic college students all over the nation, anxious to serve their country by helping others abroad.

Within a few weeks, the Peace Corps was born, charged with sending America’s youth to serve overseas as volunteer teachers, engineers, carpenters and artisans of all sorts.

Today, at 30, the Peace Corps is larger and more extensive, but the shimmering Camelot image that initially suffused it has dimmed with time. Today, it is an agency in flux--and in turmoil.

Instead of operating solely in Third World countries, it is refocusing some of its efforts to Eastern Europe. Its volunteers now are older--by and large in their 30s. Even more unsettling to some critics, the agency has become embroiled in a controversy over whether it is becoming too political under the Bush Administration.

Its Bush-appointed director, former Atlanta insurance executive Paul D. Coverdell, has come under fire for a variety of changes he has proposed or put into effect:

* Coverdell’s effort to make the Peace Corps “a vibrant, vital part of U.S. foreign policy” rather than continuing to be politically independent of the Administration has been attacked by Peace Corps veterans, who charge it would compromise the organization’s integrity.

* He also has angered critics by trying to change the organization’s name from Peace Corps to United States Peace Corps--a switch designed to more visibly promote the nation, but which opponents charged would diffuse the altruistic, nonpolitical spirit of the volunteer corps.

* The new director’s push to rechannel some of the Corps’ activities from Third World countries to Eastern Europe has drawn fire from both the veteran volunteers and the General Accounting Office, which complained that developing countries were coming out the losers.

* A similar battle emerged over Coverdell’s attempt last summer to cut funds for projects dealing with women’s development, agriculture and fisheries in favor of domestic teaching fellowships for returning volunteers and a pen-pal program between Peace Corps workers and public school pupils.

Just last November, the Corps’ own inspector general found the changes had caused a major rift in Peace Corps ranks, producing “strain, confusion and chaos” within the agency.

And eventually, Coverdell was forced to reverse himself on his plan to change the name of the agency--after Congress stepped in, threatening to cut off funds for stationery bearing the new name.

For his part, Coverdell is unfazed by the barrage of criticism, defending the changes as fully justified in meeting the new world challenges.

“The era of the ‘mud hut image’ is over,” he declared. “The world is changing, the requests from the countries are changing, and we are changing. When the Peace Corps was established, three-fourths of the world was rural. Now it’s about half-and-half.”

In his defense, Coverdell points out that only a small part of the agency’s budget--2% in 1991--will be spent on Eastern Europe. And the agency is expanding this year to serve 90 countries, compared to 73 just two years ago.

This year, volunteers will arrive in Laos and Mongolia, the first Marxist-ruled nations to accept the Peace Corps. Talks are also under way to set up programs in China, Mozambique and Yugoslavia, as well as to resume work in the Philippines.

“This is a new generation of Peace Corps,” Coverdell has said in speeches.

But critics charge that Coverdell’s internal changes are only part of the Peace Corps’ current problems. They say the agency is also being hurt because the director, a former Georgia state senator who headed President Bush’s Dixie campaign in 1988, is planning to run for office himself.

Indeed, during his first 18 months as Peace Corps director, Coverdell visited his home town of Atlanta 19 times and appeared eight times in five other cities in Georgia--trips that all were paid for in full or in part by the government.

In all, 26 of the 45 of the domestic trips that Coverdell made as director in that period took him to Georgia at some point.

He has also been criticized for filling headquarters staff positions not with former field volunteers, as his predecessors did, but with people who have ties to Georgia, the Republican Party or the White House.

While Coverdell insists that “talent is the issue” on hiring decisions, of the 15 senior positions on his staff, only six have been filled by former volunteers or former Peace Corps staffers.

Coverdell says much of the criticism has been a reaction to his efforts to reorganize the agency.

When he took office in 1989, volunteers were down to 5,100 from a peak in 1966 of 15,556, and there was congressional criticism that the agency was not doing enough to educate Americans about other countries.

Today, the agency is up to 6,100 volunteers and hopes to more than fill Congress’ 1985 request to increase its staff to 10,000 volunteers by the turn of the century.

To be sure, this isn’t the first time that the Peace Corps has been under fire.

The Corps flourished under the leadership of its first director, Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law, and under the continued interest of the President himself.

But with Kennedy’s assassination and the bitter divisions of the Vietnam War, its idealism foundered. Some say it never fully recovered.

As young Americans questioned all aspects of their government’s international activities, the Peace Corps became the target of attack by the left and the right. Liberals equated the Peace Corps with the CIA. Conservatives complained that the CIA was not infiltrating the Peace Corps enough.

Richard M. Nixon nearly killed the agency when he became President in 1969. “Nixon hated it because it was a Kennedy program,” said Charles Peters, who headed the Corps’ department of evaluations under Shriver.

Rather than simply abolish the popular agency, Nixon tried to smother it. He transferred it into ACTION, an agency he created to consolidate all federal volunteer programs. By the spring of 1972, half of the country directors and 250 senior staff members in Washington had been fired.

Ironically, it was under a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, that the Peace Corps began to recover. At Reagan’s request, Congress approved legislation to separate the Peace Corps from ACTION, again allowing it to stand alone.

But in recent years, despite a 33% budget increase since 1988, the Peace Corps has been torn by internal debate and by poor reviews from past volunteers.

Today, the average age of volunteers is 31, not 24, as it was in the 1960s. Half of the volunteers are women, compared to less than one-third before. And minority recruitment is up to 12% from almost zero before.

Most troubling to older veterans is that the Peace Corps no longer looks for young generalists, but is looking instead for skilled specialists, such as engineers and small business consultants. The veterans contend that generalists were more flexible--able to perform any job in a foreign community, from building wells to teaching and farming. About a third of today’s volunteers have college degrees in the liberal arts.

But some things haven’t changed in the Corps. Although volunteers are older, more than 70% still marry other Peace Corps volunteers, and most of them still come from three states: California, Massachusetts and Washington.

Selecting the Recruits: A Step by Step Process

The recruitment process is initiated in Peace Corps offices in various foreign countries. The offices compile a list of the volunteers the countries want: skills they need, how many volunteers they want and when they want them to begin work. They update the list quarterly and submit it annually to Washington and to the 15 regional recruitment offices in the United States.

* Recruiting of volunteers is done primarily on college campuses. With the recent emphasis on skilled volunteers, more recruiting is done by mailing lists to specialized organizations. Volunteers must be at least 18 years of age. The corps has no upper age limit.

* Interested parties contact one of the recruitment offices. They give basic information on their background and age. The information is reviewed, and most interested parties are sent an application.

* Applications are reviewed at regional recruiting offices. Recruiters try to match the applicants for volunteer slots in various countries in the following nine months.

* If applicants meet the conditions, they are called for a personal interview in the regional office.

* The files of applicants nominated for service are sent to Washington. The applicant is notified. References are called and the applicant must pass medical clearance and legal clearance.

* If accepted by Washington, the application is sent to the placement office, which matchs the applicant with a country, program and training. Less than half the applicants receive assignments they request on the original form.

* Applicants accept, decline or negotiate an invitation to join the Peace Corps.

* Volunteers are sent to the country where they will serve for training, where they learn some of the language and culture of the country. Training lasts anywhere from 6 weeks to 15 weeks depending on the assignment. The trainee dropout rate is 15% to 20%.

* Those who remain are sworn in as volunteers.

* Volunteers serve for two years, during which there is ongoing training programs. The Peace Corps reports a 15% to 22% early termination rate.